103-10 Going Beyond Dinosaurs: Using Local Fossils and the Paleobiology Database to Engage Middle School Students in Project Based Learning

Session: Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Evolving Geoscience Curricula for a Changing World (Posters)

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When children learn about Earth’s history, they often start with dinosaurs. However, while engaging, dinosaurs represent only a small part of the biological diversity that has existed throughout Earth’s history. In order to increase student interest and engagement with curriculum, students participated in project that used local and regional fossils as the foundation. 

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA) collaborated with a public middle school science teacher to create a more culturally relevant PBL (Project Based Learning) entitled “LA Through Time” for their Earth Science unit. The goal of the PBL was to increase student engagement with the content, and thus learning, by making the content more relevant to students and providing student choice when possible. Los Angeles, and the broader California region, has a rich fossil history, which can be incorporated into the curriculum making it more relevant to local students. 

The PBL began with an entry event in which student groups chose one of three large local fossil finds to read about and create a poster to present to their class. Using resources curated by museum staff, student working groups then selected organisms to research for which fossils had been found in Los Angeles and surrounding areas of California. The school teacher, supported by museum staff, trained more than one hundred eighth grade students to use the Paleobiology Database to research the distribution and ecology of each organism and create fossil maps. Student working groups then researched and wrote a description about the geologic time period in which their organism lived. Students translated their learning into a diorama format, which they presented to other science classes, as the PBL capstone. Utilizing Peer Learning, students were educated on other time periods by visiting the dioramas and reading the descriptions created by other working groups.  

Throughout the PBL, students were exposed to core concepts including sedimentary rock formation, fossil formation, absolute and relative dating and the geologic timescale. In order to measure the impact of the PBL on student learning, students were given a pre- and post-survey of knowledge.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

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